"After the game is before the game," as the legendary German coach Sepp Herberger used to say. Hardly had Real Salt Lake been eliminated from the MLS playoffs than it had to start planning for next season, what with Monday's expansion draft for Seattle Sounders FC looming.

Players will be called in Wednesday and Thursday to be told if they will be on the club's unprotected list of players for potential selection by the expansion franchise. "There's some difficult messages to deliver," said RSL coach Jason Kreis. "We're not in a world where we can have all the players back, there's rules in MLS that are changing, there's (a) salary cap we have to adhere to, and we don't have the allocation money that we had last year."

Midfielder Kyle Beckerman said Tuesday's final training session had been "a little sad because we had a really good group. If you think about it, some of the guys aren't going to be back. That's the way professional sports are." At the same time, he added, "We've got to keep that core together that we started this year and just keep moving on, and don't get complacent."

Beckerman said he was most proud of the attacking style that Salt Lake developed. Kreis was still smarting about the anti-style that turned out to be successful for its opponent, New York. "It's a difficult balance." he said. "On the one hand you're charged to win games, but winning the most games isn't always going to be about playing the best soccer. A lot of times they don't go hand in hand. Saturday night was a shining example. Bad soccer won." See if Dave van den Bergh cares.